My Name Means Fire
A Memoir
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“I was riveted by this searing ode to the resiliency of the human psyche, rich in beauty and devastation.”—Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood
An unflinching and stunning debut memoir of an Iranian girl’s coming-of-age experiencing abuse, war, and superstition—and her survival through dissociative identity disorder, which offered her an inner world into which she could escape
When she was a child, Atash Yaghmaian’s home life was unpredictable: a confusing mix of love and terror. Outside of her home, Iran was also on fire. Her reality of abuse, war, gender oppression, and religious superstition left her feeling unsafe everywhere. So, she left reality and disassociated into a place she called the House of Stone: a building in a magical forest full of peaceful creatures, kind talking trees, and volcanoes. Inhabiting this world are 9 beings, each different parts of Atash, who would be her salvation from the external horrors of her outer world.
Set against the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime, and the 8-year Iran-Iraq War, My Name Means Fire is Atash’s story of survival as she experiences tragic events including sexual abuse, a mother who subjected her to superstitious rituals, and the horrors of war. In chapters alternating with what’s happening in her outside world, her other parts—each named after a color—tell the story of her inner world, giving readers an understanding of what it’s like to be inside the consciousness of someone who is multiple.
Honest, powerful, and moving, My Name Means Fire is a bold narrative that challenges the stigma and misinformation around dissociative identity disorder (DID) and ultimately reckons with what it takes to survive.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Psychotherapist Yaghmaian recounts in her raw debut the traumas of growing up in late-20th-century Iran and her subsequent experiences with dissociative identity disorder. Born a few years prior to the 1978 revolution, Yaghmaian's parents divorced before she was a year old—a significant taboo in Iran—and she was sexually abused by a teacher as a young girl. To cope, she frequently retreated "into a place I called the House of Stone: a building in a magical forest full of peaceful creatures," within which she took on various personas named after her favorite colors. After immigrating to the U.S. at 19, Yaghmaian was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder). "I'd always thought of multiple personalities as something only evil people had," she writes, but "far from being a curse, DID has been... a coping mechanism that allowed me to survive." In a bold artistic stroke, Yaghmaian peppers the account with chapters from the perspective of her identities, including Red, her "youngest part," and Burgundy, a "servant." That framework sometimes traps Yaghmaian's insights inside excessively precious language ("Inside the House of Stone, I know every tongue and can read a book like anyone else, but outside, words turn into rivers that carry me downstream to the Witch"). For the most part, though, this is a revelatory look inside a unique mind.
